Saturday, 28 December 2013

Epiphone SC-550 "Scroll" guitar circa 1976-79

Here's another of my favourite guitar designs; it's an Epiphone SC-550 from the late 1970s, back in the day when Epiphone had their own discrete range of guitars and weren't merely Gibson's equivalant of Fender's Squier brandname. Made in Japan, the scroll-bodied SC-550 is a very cool alternative to Gibson's Les Paul with Black Beauty finish, set-neck construction, ebony fingerboard, 24 fret neck, abalone markers, and - looking at the controls - I'm guessing some kind of coil tap facility. I particularly like the body shape with its German carve which helps accentuate the scroll motif.

4 comments:

These are fantastic guitars and feel very, very much like a USA Gibson product of the time. The necks are relatively (but not overly) thin and the frets are of the low and wide variety that Gibson was using. The switch is a coil split (affects both pickups) and these are one of a handful of Gibson like set neck guitars with at 25.5" (Fender) scale length. This one has the tune-o-matic style bridge but they also came with a wraparound type.

Beautiful instrument. It reminds me of one played by breton guitarist Dan ar Braz (luthier built) I don't remember who made it but it looked really similar. Looking at the controls I guess that the little switch is just an in and out of phase switch that was very popular in the seventies...